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Girl with the Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer, 1665 (Image by Mauritshuis)
The art of Europe, or Western art, encompasses the history of visual art in Europe. European prehistoric art started as mobile rock and cave painting art and was characteristic of the period between the Paleolithic and the Iron Age [1]. Written histories of European art often begin with the art of the Ancient Middle East and the Ancient Aegean civilizations, dating from the 3rd millennium BC. Parallel with these significant cultures, art of one form or another existed all over Europe, wherever there were people, leaving signs such as carvings, decorated artifacts and huge standing stones.
However a consistent pattern of artistic development within Europe becomes clear only with the art of Ancient Greece, adopted and transformed by Rome and carried; with the Empire, across much of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. [2]
The influence of the art of the Classical period waxed and waned throughout the next two thousand years, seeming to slip into a distant memory in parts of the Medieval period, to re-emerge in the Renaissance, suffer a period of what some early art historians viewed as "decay" during the Baroque period [3] to reappear in a refined form in Neo-Classicism [4] and to be reborn in Post-Modernism [5].
European art is arranged into a number of stylistic periods, which, historically, overlap each other as different styles flourished in different areas. Broadly the periods are, Classical, Byzantine, Medieval, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassical, Modern and Postmodern [6].
Texts were taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_Europe
[1] Oosterbeek, Luíz. "European Prehistoric Art". Europeart.
[2] Boardman, John ed., The Oxford History of Classical Art, pp. 349-369, Oxford University Press, 1993, ISBN 0198143869
[3] Banister Fletcher, A History of Architecture
[4] Murray, P. and Murray, L. (1963) The Art of the Renaissance. London: Thames & Hudson (World of Art), p. 9. ISBN 978-0-500-20008-7
[5] Hause, S. & Maltby, W. (2001). A History of European Society. Essentials of Western Civilization (Vol. 2, pp. 245–246). Belmont, CA: Thomson Learning, Inc.
[6] "Art of Europe". Saint Louis Art Museum. Slam.
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Girl with the Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer, 1665 (Image by Mauritshuis)
The Renaissance is a period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and surpass the ideas and achievements of classical antiquity.
Beginning in Italy, and spreading to the rest of Europe by the 16th century, its influence was felt in literature, philosophy, art, music, politics, science, religion, and other aspects of intellectual inquiry. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, and searched for realism and human emotion in art [1].
Renaissance humanists such as Poggio Bracciolini sought out in Europe's monastic libraries the Latin literary, historical, and oratorical texts of Antiquity, while the Fall of Constantinople (1453) generated a wave of émigré Greek scholars bringing precious manuscripts in ancient Greek, many of which had fallen into obscurity in the West. It is in their new focus on literary and historical texts that Renaissance scholars differed so markedly from the medieval scholars of the Renaissance of the 12th century, who had focused on studying Greek and Arabic works of natural sciences, philosophy and mathematics, rather than on such cultural texts.
School of Athens by Raphael, 1509 (Image by Apostolic Palace)
In the revival of neoplatonism Renaissance humanists did not reject Christianity; quite the contrary, many of the Renaissance's greatest works were devoted to it, and the Church patronized many works of Renaissance art. However, a subtle shift took place in the way that intellectuals approached religion that was reflected in many other areas of cultural life [2]. In addition, many Greek Christian works, including the Greek New Testament, were brought back from Byzantium to Western Europe and engaged Western scholars for the first time since late antiquity. This new engagement with Greek Christian works, and particularly the return to the original Greek of the New Testament promoted by humanists Lorenzo Valla and Erasmus, would help pave the way for the Protestant Reformation.
Well after the first artistic return to classicism had been exemplified in the sculpture of Nicola Pisano, Florentine painters led by Masaccio strove to portray the human form realistically, developing techniques to render perspective and light more naturally. Political philosophers, most famously Niccolò Machiavelli, sought to describe political life as it really was, that is to understand it rationally. A critical contribution to Italian Renaissance humanism Giovanni Pico della Mirandola wrote the famous text "De hominis dignitate" (Oration on the Dignity of Man, 1486), which consists of a series of theses on philosophy, natural thought, faith and magic defended against any opponent on the grounds of reason. In addition to studying classical Latin and Greek, Renaissance authors also began increasingly to use vernacular languages; combined with the introduction of printing, this would allow many more people access to books, especially the Bible [2].
In all, the Renaissance could be viewed as an attempt by intellectuals to study and improve the secular and worldly, both through the revival of ideas from antiquity, and through novel approaches to thought.
Some scholars, such as Rodney Stark [3], play down the Renaissance in favor of the earlier innovations of the Italian city-states in the High Middle Ages, which married responsive government, Christianity and the birth of capitalism. This analysis argues that, whereas the great European states (France and Spain) were absolutist monarchies, and others were under direct Church control, the independent city republics of Italy took over the principles of capitalism invented on monastic estates and set off a vast unprecedented commercial revolution that preceded and financed the Renaissance.
Texts were taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance
[1] Perry, M. Humanities in the Western Tradition Archived 29 April 2009 at the Wayback Machine, Ch. 13
[2] Open University, Looking at the Renaissance: Religious Context in the Renaissance
[3] Stark, Rodney, The Victory of Reason, Random House, NY: 2005
The Baroque is a highly ornate and often extravagant style of architecture, art and music that flourished in Europe from the early 17th until the mid-18th century [1].
It followed the Renaissance style and preceded the Rococo (in the past often referred to as "late Baroque") and Neoclassical styles. It was encouraged by the Catholic Church as a means to counter the simplicity and austerity of Protestant architecture, art and music, though Lutheran Baroque art developed in parts of Europe as well [2].
The Night Watch by Rembrandt, 1642 (Image by Amsterdam Museum)
The Baroque style used contrast, movement, exuberant detail, deep colour, grandeur and surprise to achieve a sense of awe. The style began at the start of the 17th century in Rome, then spread rapidly to France, northern Italy, Spain and Portugal, then to Austria and southern Germany.
Architecture: origins and characteristics
The Baroque style of architecture was a result of doctrines adopted by the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent in 1545–63, in response to the Protestant Reformation. The first phase of the Counter-Reformation had imposed a severe, academic style on religious architecture, which had appealed to intellectuals but not the mass of churchgoers. The Council of Trent decided instead to appeal to a more popular audience, and declared that the arts should communicate religious themes with direct and emotional involvement [3,4]. Lutheran Baroque art developed as a confessional marker of identity, in response to the Great Iconoclasm of Calvinists [5].
Baroque churches were designed with a large central space, where the worshippers could be close to the altar, with a dome or cupola high overhead, allowing light to illuminate the church below. The dome was one of the central symbolic features of baroque architecture illustrating the union between the heavens and the earth, The inside of the cupola was lavishly decorated with paintings of angels and saints, and with stucco statuettes of angels, giving the impression to those below of looking up at heaven [6].
Another feature of baroque churches are the quadratura; trompe-l'œil paintings on the ceiling in stucco frames, either real or painted, crowded with paintings of saints and angels and connected by architectural details with the balustrades and consoles. Quadratura paintings of Atlantes below the cornices appear to be supporting the ceiling of the church. Unlike the painted ceilings of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, which combined different scenes, each with its own perspective, to be looked at one at a time, the Baroque ceiling paintings were carefully created so the viewer on the floor of the church would see the entire ceiling in correct perspective, as if the figures were real.
The interiors of baroque churches became more and more ornate in the High Baroque, and focused around the altar, usually placed under the dome. The most celebrated baroque decorative works of the High Baroque are the Chair of Saint Peter (1647–53) and the Baldachino of St. Peters in Rome (1623–34), both by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The Baldequin of St. Peter is an example of the balance of opposites in Baroque art; the gigantic proportions of the piece, with the apparent lightness of the canopy; and the contrast between the solid twisted columns, bronze, gold and marble of the piece with the flowing draperies of the angels on the canopy. The Dresden Frauenkirche serves as a prominent example of Lutheran Baroque art, which was completed in 1743 after being commissioned by the Lutheran city council of Dresden and was "compared by eighteenth-century observers to St Peter’s in Rome" [7].
The twisted column in the interior of churches is one of the signature features of the Baroque. It gives both a sense of motion and also a dramatic new way of reflecting light.
The cartouche was another characteristic feature of baroque decoration. These were large plaques of carved of marble or stone, usually oval and with a rounded surface, which carried images or text in gilded letters, and were placed as interior decoration or above the doorways of buildings, delivering messages to those below. They showed a wide variety of invention, and were found in all types of buildings, from cathedrals and palaces to small chapels [8].
Baroque architects sometimes used forced perspective to create illusions. For the Palazzo Spada in Rome, Borromini used columns of diminishing size, a narrowing floor and a miniature statue in the garden beyond to create the illusion that a passageway was thirty meters long, when it was actually only seven meters long. A statue at the end of the passage appears to be life-size, though it is only sixty centimeters high. Borromini designed the illusion with the assistance of a mathematician.
Texts were taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque
[1] "About the Baroque Period - Music of the Baroque". www.baroque.org.
[2] Heal, Bridget (1 December 2011). "'Better Papist than Calvinist': Art and Identity in Later Lutheran Germany". German History. 29 (4). German History Society: 584–609.
[3] Hughes, J. Quentin (1953). The Influence of Italian Mannerism Upon Maltese Architecture Archived
[4] Helen Gardner, Fred S. Kleiner, and Christin J. Mamiya, Gardner's Art Through the Ages (Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2005), p. 516.
[5] Heal, Bridget (20 February 2018). "The Reformation and Lutheran Baroque". Oxford University Press.
[6] Ducher, p. 102
[7] Heal, Bridget (1 December 2011). "'Better Papist than Calvinist': Art and Identity in Later Lutheran Germany". German History. 29 (4). German History Society: 584–609.
[8] Ducher (1988), p. 102
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Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect.[3] While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he has also become known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and palaeontology. Leonardo is widely regarded to have been a genius who epitomised the Renaissance humanist ideal [4], and his collective works comprise a contribution to later generations of artists matched only by that of his younger contemporary Michelangelo [3,4].
This portrait attributed to Francesco Melzi, c. 1515–1518, is the only certain contemporary depiction of Leonardo.
Born out of wedlock to a successful notary and a lower-class woman in, or near, Vinci, he was educated in Florence by the Italian painter and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio. He began his career in the city, but then spent much time in the service of Ludovico Sforza in Milan. Later, he worked in Florence and Milan again, as well as briefly in Rome, all while attracting a large following of imitators and students. Upon the invitation of Francis I, he spent his last three years in France, where he died in 1519. Since his death, there has not been a time where his achievements, diverse interests, personal life, and empirical thinking have failed to incite interest and admiration [3][4], making him a frequent namesake and subject in culture.
Leonardo is identified as one of the greatest painters in the history of Western art and is often credited as the founder of the High Renaissance [3]. Despite having many lost works and fewer than 25 attributed major works – including numerous unfinished works – he created some of the most influential paintings in the Western canon [3], The Mona Lisa is his best known work and is the world's most famous individual painting. The Last Supper is the most reproduced religious painting of all time and his Vitruvian Man drawing is also regarded as a cultural icon. In 2017, Salvator Mundi, attributed in whole or part to Leonardo [5], was sold at auction for US$450.3 million, setting a new record for the most expensive painting ever sold at public auction.
Revered for his technological ingenuity, he conceptualised flying machines, a type of armoured fighting vehicle, concentrated solar power, a ratio machine that could be used in an adding machine [6,7], and the double hull. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime, as the modern scientific approaches to metallurgy and engineering were only in their infancy during the Renaissance. Some of his smaller inventions, however, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire. He made substantial discoveries in anatomy, civil engineering, hydrodynamics, geology, optics, and tribology, but he did not publish his findings and they had little to no direct influence on subsequent science [8].
Texts were taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci
[1] John Varriano, Italian Baroque and Rococo Architecture, New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
[2] Zöllner, Frank (2019) [2003]. Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings and Drawings (Anniversary ed.). Cologne: Taschen
[3] Kemp, Martin (2003). "Leonardo da Vinci". Grove Art Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press..
[4] Heydenreich, Ludwig Heinrich (28 April 2020). "Leonardo da Vinci | Biography, Art & Facts | Britannica". Encyclopædia Britannica. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Archived
[5] Zöllner, Frank (2019) [2003]. Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings and Drawings (Anniversary ed.). Cologne: Taschen. ISBN 978-3-8365-7625-3.
[6] Kaplan, Erez (1996). "Roberto Guatelli's Controversial Replica of Leonardo da Vinci's Adding Machine". Archived from the original
[7] Kaplan, E. (April 1997). "Anecdotes". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 19 (2): 62–69.
[8] Capra, Fritjof (2007). The Science of Leonardo. US: Doubleday.
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), known mononymously as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect [2], and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was inspired by models from classical antiquity and had a lasting influence on Western art. Michelangelo's creative abilities and mastery in a range of artistic arenas define him as an archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and elder contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci [3]. Given the sheer volume of surviving correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences, Michelangelo is one of the best-documented artists of the 16th century. He was lauded by contemporary biographers as the most accomplished artist of his era [4][5].
Michelangelo achieved fame early. Two of his best-known works, the Pietà and David, were sculpted before the age of 30. Although he did not consider himself a painter, Michelangelo created two of the most influential frescoes in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, and The Last Judgment on its altar wall. His design of the Laurentian Library pioneered Mannerist architecture [6]. At the age of 71, he succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of St. Peter's Basilica. Michelangelo transformed the plan so that the Western end was finished to his design, as was the dome, with some modification, after his death.
Michelangelo was the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive.[3] Three biographies were published during his lifetime. One of them, by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that Michelangelo's work transcended that of any artist living or dead, and was "supreme in not one art alone but in all three." [7].
In his lifetime, Michelangelo was often called Il Divino ("the divine one") [8]. His contemporaries admired his terribilità—his ability to instill a sense of awe in viewers of his art. Attempts by subsequent artists to imitate [9] the expressive physicality of Michelangelo's style contributed to the rise of Mannerism, a short-lived movement in Western art between the High Renaissance and the Baroque.
Texts were taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo
[1] Wells, John (3 April 2008). Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (3rd ed.). Pearson Longman.
[2] Marinazzo, Adriano (2022). Michelangelo: l'architettura. Giunti.
[3] Michelangelo at the Encyclopædia Britannica
[4] Symonds, John (9 January 2019). The Life of Michelangelo. BookRix.
[5] Vasari, Giorgio (14 August 2008). The Lives of the Artists. Oxford University Press.
[6] Hughes, A., & Elam, C. (2003). "Michelangelo". Oxford Art Online. Retrieved 14 April 2018, from Oxford Art Online
[7] Smithers, Tamara. 2016. Michelangelo in the New Millennium: Conversations about Artistic Practice, Patronage and Christianity. Boston: Brill. p. vii.
[8] Emison, Patricia. A (2004). Creating the "Divine Artist": from Dante to Michelangelo. Brill.
History
The early 17th century marked a time of change for those of the Roman Catholic religion, a symbolization of their strength as a congregation and the intelligence of their creative minds. In response to the Protestant Reformation of the earlier 16th century, Roman Catholics embarked on a program of restoration, a new way of living that became known as the Counter Reformation. The purpose of the Counter Reformation was aimed at remedying some of the abuses challenged by the Protestants earlier in the century [1]. Within the church, a renewed Catholic culture was imposed on Italian society. It started with the Council of Trent, imposed by Pope Paul III, a commission of cardinals who came together to address issues of the Catholic Church and regain faith among worshipers [2]. This resulted in guidelines established by the Church for the commissioning work of artists to communicate biblical truths and ideals.
Secular Construction
New secular construction resulted from the establishment of pioneering religious orders. Between 1524 and 1575, the Barnabite, Jesuit, Oratorian and Theatine orders came into being, and as their influence spread, more and more new churches began being built. By 1725, there were 323 churches in Rome alone, serving a permanent population of fewer than 150,000 people [1]. Because of this rapid growth in church building, it became the responsibility of these religious orders to spread the word of Catholicism to the population. Religious books were increasingly being printed in Venice for distribution to the clergy and literate worshipers, passed out during mass and offering continuous reminders of the presence of Christ on everyday life [3].
Churches had now become a place for encouragement spaces of expansive beauty and decoration.
"They provided exciting imagery that contrasted greatly with the iconoclastic inclinations of the Protestant Reformation led by Martin Luther” [2].
This space is an example of quadratura, an attempt to create an illusion through architecture, painting, and sculpture. Painting and sculpture create an illusion of never-ending height and dramatic composition.
Interiors
Pietro da Cortona was one of the painters of the 17th century who employed this illusionist way of painting. Among his most important commissions were the frescoes he painted for the Palace of the Barberini family. Pietro da Cortona’s compositions were the largest decorative frescoes executed in Rome since the work of Michelangelo at the Sistine Chapel [3]. Harold Osborne, author of The Oxford Companion of Art, comments on his work the ‘Divine Providence’ completed for the Barberini palace: